


tether

by sterydia



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Tether(s), Established Relationship, F/M, Spark Stiles Stilinski, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 19:44:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4449803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sterydia/pseuds/sterydia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And then she heard it.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>StilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStiles.</i></p><p> </p><p>Over and over, soft like the sound of wind blowing through the trees. It struck Lydia right then what that meant and she rolled her lips into her mouth to stop the scream that would come out. She hadn’t been wrong yet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	tether

**Author's Note:**

> My second fic challenge is in the bag! This is for [twreversebang](http://twreversebang.livejournal.com) at Livejournal, and it was my job to write a fic off of a piece of art.
> 
> I wanna thank my artist, [water_singer](http://water_singer.livejournal.com) for the beautiful art that inspired this story. You'll see the pieces, including the ones she added after I sent her my fic throughout the story, and you can tell her how lovely her art is [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4450205).
> 
> Mucho thanks to [trashstiles](http://trashstiles.tumblr.com) on tumblr, who pretty much put the vision of Lydia's first scene into my head!
> 
> Also, thank you to my wonderful beta [Megan](http://theron09.livejournal.com) for being an all around rockstar and bouncing ideas back and forth with me when this story was still forming. All remaining mistakes are mine!
> 
> Hope you like this!

  
  
art by [water_singer](http://water_singer.livejournal.com)  


  


Her knees buckled and she collapsed to the floor. She couldn’t breathe, fingers curling into the carpet so tight she could feel the fibers tear beneath her nails. She hunched over, trying to get more air into her lungs. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to focus on something else, anything else to calm herself down. Because if she didn’t know any better, she was having a panic attack in the middle of her living room. And then she heard it.

_StilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStilesStiles._

Over and over, soft like the sound of wind blowing through the trees. It struck Lydia right then what that meant and she rolled her lips into her mouth to stop the scream that would come out. She hadn’t been wrong yet, like when Stiles was in the hospital and all she heard was the sound of the machines. When she screamed that night, Stiles was gone and the Nogitsune had taken over. This felt worse than Stiles slipping away and something else filling his skin. This was more permanent.

Lydia put both of her hands over her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut as tears leaked out, sliding down the bridge of her nose and onto the carpet. Before, the screams came when the noise in her head got so loud and she needed to focus in on what she was hearing. But this one, this one was going to rip itself out of her, uncaring of the hole it was about to leave in her life.

“Lydia, I’m leaving for work!” Her mother was coming into the living room, and Lydia tried to pull herself out of the paralyzing state she was in before she could see her, but she wasn’t fast enough. Natalie gasped and was instantly at her side. “Lydia, what’s wrong? Are you okay sweetheart?”

Her mother helped her into a sitting position, kneeling on the carpet and pushing Lydia’s tangled hair out of her face. She smoothed her hands over her cheeks, wiping away stray tears. Lydia still struggled for breath though the feeling wasn’t as strong as it had been.

“What happened? What did you hear?” Natalie asked.

It hadn’t been easy, explaining the whole banshee thing to her mother, but she’d been more understanding than Lydia had expected. Maybe because she’d witnessed it all in her mother in law before. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to make the same mistakes she’d made with Lorraine that led to her thinking that she was crazy all of those years. Whatever the reason, she understood, and that mattered to Lydia.

“Stiles.” Just saying his name hurt, like letting it escape her mouth was as bad as letting out the scream, and she swallowed convulsively. “Something is going to h-happen to Stiles.”

Natalie was looking at her with that same sad expression that she’d been wearing since she found out what was going on in Beacon Hills. Lydia could never tell what was going on in her mother’s head, but she knew that she believed her. Natalie pulled herself up onto her feet and then helped Lydia sit on the edge of the couch. Her cell phone was on the coffee table and she wanted to lunge for it. She wanted to get Stiles on the phone and hear his voice, make sure that he was still okay for now.

“…Lydia, did you hear me?” Blinking rapidly, Lydia looked over at Natalie. The frown lines at the corner of her mouth had deepened. “I said I’m taking you to Stiles.”

That worked for Lydia. She hurried through getting dressed, only bothering with the barest of makeup and putting her hair up into a messy knot on top of her head. Her heart was still thudding loudly in her ears and in the back of her mind, she could still hear Stiles’ name on a loop. As she walked to the car, she realized that the voice in her head was a little familiar; soft and feminine, and for a moment she thought it was Allison’s. Lydia could believe that it was her friend’s voice that she was hearing, trying to warn her about Stiles. But the pitch wasn’t right, the voice sounded like it belonged to someone older. It felt like the name was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t reach it.

Before she knew it, Natalie was pulling her car up outside Stiles’ house. Only the jeep was in the driveway, and Lydia felt herself releasing the white knuckle grip she’d had on the seatbelt since they’d left their house. She had to talk to Stiles first, and then they could call the rest of the pack. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that they would do everything they could to stop something from happening to him, but Lydia would feel better talking to him first.

“Be careful. Call me as soon as you can. Or John. Or—” Natalie was rambling nervously, her hands twitching on the steering wheel. Lydia reached over and squeezed her fingers gently before pulling her mother into a hug.

“I’ll be okay. I’ll call, I promise,” Lydia assured her, opening the door and getting out of the car. She knew that her mother was going to sit there at the curb until she was safely inside.

Digging for her keys in the mess that was her purse, Lydia started up the sidewalk. She’d always had a key to Stiles’ house and it was something that she actually used when they were friends before, before high school began and popularity mattered. Somewhere around Jackson’s leaving for London, she started using it again. John never had a problem with her letting herself in, in fact he’d insisted that she stopped using the doorbell altogether. There was an odd sort of comfort, sliding the key into the lock and unlocking the door. She glanced back over her shoulder, waving at Natalie and pasting on a brave smile, before going into the house.

Inside, she toed off her heels by the steps and dropped her purse on the couch. She could hear Stiles in the kitchen, the refrigerator opening and closing, and she padded down the hallway. His back was to her, but when he turned his head she could see a small smile on his face. He knew that she was there.

“You’re lucky I’m not an intruder.” She said lightly, crossing her arms over her chest and leaning in the doorway. He turned around to look at her, smile widening, and Lydia felt her heart lurch in her chest.

After the Nogitsune, Stiles had a hard time meeting Lydia’s eyes, and she understood that. Something wearing his face kidnapped her and held her hostage, and he was afraid that she would always associate Stiles with an evil fox spirit that went on a mass murdering spree in their town. But she would always be able to tell her Stiles from the Nogitsune; that thing could never show the amount of warmth and mischief that Stiles could with one look.

“The house is surrounded with mountain ash, and there’s wolfsbane stashed all over the place. This house is an impenetrable fortress,” he said, but that didn’t make Lydia feel any better.

  
  
[art by water_singer](http://water_singer.livejournal.com)   


  


Walking over to him, Lydia pressed her hands against his sides, pushing herself up onto her toes to kiss him. The noise in her head faded until there was nothing there, and Stiles’ hands curved around the sides of her neck. It was still new, the two of them. After what had happened before with the Nogitsune and Allison she and Stiles sort of fell together, holding each other up. Being each other’s anchor.

“Not that I’m not all for this plan,” he pulled back, pressing his forehead against hers. “But are you okay?”

She could have lied, come up with some other excuse until she could figure out what was going on. But he’d always believed her when it came to her banshee powers, and he’d always been there to help her. She couldn’t just do this without him.

“It’s a banshee thing,” she hedged, and the corner of Stiles’ mouth twisted up.

“A banshee thing like you just heard something randomly, or a banshee thing like you already know something and we need to have a pack meeting before someone dies?” he asked.

Lydia felt the hot sting of tears in her eyes and she tried to turn away, but Stiles quickly caught her arm and pulled her back.

“Hey, talk to me Lyds. What’s going on?” he asked.

She tried to stop crying long enough to talk but she couldn’t, and Stiles pulled her into his arms, holding her against him as she sobbed against his chest. She’d felt this kind of hurt only twice before; when her grandmother died, and then with Allison. But while the hurt was the same, it was still different. She hadn’t foreseen Lorraine’s death, or Allison’s.

There was a sudden ringing in her ears, almost like the way she felt after yawning, and she pulled back to look up at Stiles’ face. His eyes were searching hers, like he had a million questions he wanted to ask. Knowing him, he probably did. When she breathed in, she could smell something in the air. Her brow furrowed in confusion.

“Do you smell that?” She asked, glancing around. Stiles also looked around the kitchen.

“I don’t smell anything.” He didn’t sound like he didn’t believe her, just that he couldn’t smell it.

But Lydia could smell it; oranges and vanilla. The scent was oddly comforting to her and she pulled away from Stiles, walking around the kitchen table, trying to place where it was coming from. But it was everywhere.

“You don’t smell that? It’s like a perfume, vanilla and oranges and I feel like I’ve smelled it before…” She trailed off as Stiles was looking at her like she’d slapped him right across the face. “What?”

“It’s nothing really, just…um, my mom used to wear perfume that smelled like that. It smelled like—” Lydia cut him off.

“Orange Dreamsicles?” She finished. Stiles nodded his head, swallowing hard.

It was starting to make sense; the voice that Lydia had been hearing was familiar to her because it was Claudia Stilinski warning her. Claudia had been good friends with Lydia’s mom before she died, which was one of the reasons that she and Stiles had been friends up until high school.

Claudia was trying to save Stiles.

“Do you still have any of your mom’s things in the house, Stiles?” Lydia asked.

He put both of his hands on the edge of the counter, squeezing so hard that his knuckles turned white and she could hear his bones creak. “Lydia, you need to tell me what the hell is going on, because I’m starting to panic here.” he said, and she could hear a hint of hysteria in his voice.

“Stiles.” He looked up at her and she felt an odd sense of déjà vu, like that morning in her room before Chris Argent went missing. “Where are your mom’s things? I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

It turned out that they didn’t have a lot of Claudia’s things left. It was just a couple of boxes and sealed up totes in the attic behind the Stilinski’s meager collection of Christmas decorations. One by one they hauled everything down into the dining room, spreading it out on the floor. Stiles looked like he was going to be sick, but he still unpacked it all. In the bottom corner of one of the boxes was the bottle of perfume, just about evaporated but still holding the scent. Lydia lifted the bottle to her nose and smelled it, closing her eyes.

“This morning I was in the living room and I got one of those feelings. And all I could hear over and over in my head was your name. I thought it was Allison at first, but it was your mother.” She explained as Stiles busied himself looking through a stack of beat up science fiction novels that had been in one of the boxes.

“So I’m going to die, and my mother was warning you? Just when I think I’ll get used to the way our lives are, something always comes along and surprises me.” He muttered, pulling another box towards him.  


Lydia knelt beside him where he was crouched on the floor and brushed her fingers down the side of his face. “Hey, we’re going to figure this out. Don’t let me crying in the middle of your kitchen make you think we won’t.”

“When have I ever doubted you, Lydia Martin?” He asked, smiling weakly. Lydia smiled back, and turned towards the box that he was looking through.

“When do we call everyone?” She pulled out a few more books, setting them aside.

Malia had been spending her summer between Scott and Derek’s, learning how to control her shift and generally be a human after being a coyote for so long. She and Derek were bonding as family, though she’d yet to meet Cora. That was going to be an interesting experience. Scott and Isaac were both working at the animal clinic with Deaton, and though Isaac still hadn’t officially joined the pack Lydia knew it was coming. Both he and Derek were as good as pack these days. And Kira, she was going to be back from her family vacation any day now.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know what we’re looking for here.” Stiles admitted, raking a hand through his hair.

Lydia understood his frustration. Right now, they were only going off of a whisper and a smell. They’d worked with less before. She tried to make something of the pieces of Claudia’s past that they pulled out of the boxes, but it just seemed like little mementos from her life. There wasn’t anything here.

“Hey, look at this,” Stiles lifted something blue out of the bottom of one of the smaller totes; Lydia realized that it was a blanket, old and crocheted by the looks of it. “It’s the baby blanket my mom made while she was pregnant. They brought me home in this.”

Lydia smiled softly, running her fingers over the edge of the blanket in his hands. “It’s beautiful.”

The blanket was wrapped around something, and she pushed back a layer of its folds to reveal a book. It was no bigger than one of the science fiction paperbacks they’d found, the cover made of a soft brown leather. It was a journal. Stiles pulled the book out of the blanket, turning it over in his hands. It was obvious that he’d never seen it before. When he popped the small clasp on the side, the cover lifted slightly and a scrap of paper fell out. Lydia watched all of the color drain from Stiles’ face as he read the words that were written on it.

“What does it say?” Lydia asked. He swallowed hard, and she reached over and squeezed his fingers.

“It says ‘If you’re reading this, something has happened, not only to me but to bring you to a point where you needed to go searching. Protect your Spark, Genim. Protect those you love. They’re coming for you. This book might help. I love you.’” Stiles cleared his throat, but there was no denying that just reading his mother’s words choked him up.

Lydia could still remember when Claudia got really sick, sitting in that waiting room, Stiles between her and Scott while they waited for John to arrive. How Stiles didn’t truly cry until his father walked through the doors. It wasn’t long after that then she’d stopped hanging out with Stiles and focused more on her popularity. It was something she’d always regret.

“She knew about your Spark.” Lydia wasn’t surprised by this; Stiles’ magic had to come from somewhere and it made sense that it could have come from Claudia. “And she knew that someone would come after you when you started using it?”

That thought was less appealing. Being a True Spark was something that Stiles only found out about recently; it was something that came from magical bloodlines and was almost so rare that Deaton had only heard rumors about it. Still, he started training Stiles to be the pack’s Emissary, and while Stiles probably couldn’t do half the things the werewolves could do when it came to protecting the pack he was learning how to defend it in other ways. Apparently that would be his downfall.

“Think now would be a good time to call that pack meeting?” Stiles asked, slowly flipping through the pages of the book in his lap.

From what Lydia saw, it reminded her of the bestiary. She could also see that some of it wasn’t in English. It was probably in Gaelic or Latin, but she couldn’t be sure. In between the pages there was a faded photograph of four women, and none of the faces were familiar but one. Lydia lifted the photo and saw that she was looking at a very young Claudia, she had to be maybe eighteen or nineteen in the picture.

“Maybe we should talk to your dad too.”

~

If there was one thing that Stiles was good at, besides research, it was being able to tell when someone was just acting off. It was something he’d picked up from his father over the years of watching him be the Sheriff. His dad had the ability to pick up on the fact that someone was going to lie before the lie would even form, it was something that had gotten Stiles into trouble countless times as a kid because lying to his dad just wasn’t an option. That was why when he saw the pinched expression on his father’s face, not too different from the one that he got when Stiles did something possibly illegal, he knew that something was wrong.

“Where did you say you found this?” John asked, turning the book over in his hands. Lydia sat by Stiles’ side, her hands clasped in his. She hadn’t let go of him since they got there.

“In a box of mom’s stuff. Lydia said she heard…that she heard mom’s voice saying my name. And she smelled mom’s perfume in the kitchen,” Stiles explained.

John didn’t open the book, instead he handed it back to Stiles with that look still on his face. “From what you’ve told me about your banshee powers, this means that something is going to happen to Stiles?”

“That’s how it works,” Lydia said, looking in Stiles’ direction.

After Jennifer and the Nogitsune, John just hadn’t been able to deny what was really going on in his town anymore. He read every single bit of information that Stiles had on werewolves, he talked with Chris and with Derek. He’d seen things that made it impossible not to believe. But he didn’t look surprised by the book.

“This is the part where you tell us that you have no idea what this book means,” Stiles suggested.

John rubbed a hand over his face tiredly. “I can’t tell you that, son.”

Stiles opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He was actually speechless. Because this meant that not only had his father been keeping something about his mother from him, but he knew about something possibly supernaturally related.

“So what, you wouldn’t believe me about werewolves but you knew that mom was a…what, a witch?” John didn’t say anything and Stiles’ eyes widened. “Mom was a witch? Is that what you’re saying right now?”

John fixed him with an unimpressed look. “Say that a little louder for the deputies outside that door?”

Lydia cleared her throat and Stiles finally let go of her hand to rake his fingers through his hair. He told himself that he was not about to have a panic attack in the middle of the Sheriff’s station, and squeezed his eyes shut. His mother had been something supernatural. It made sense that she was how he’d become a True Spark.

“Hey, look at me kid,” John snapped his fingers and Stiles raised his eyes to his. “Your mother was your mother. The magic thing, it was before you were born. After you, she didn’t see her coven again, she cut all ties with them.”

Lydia flipped through the pages of the book, pulling out the photograph and holding it out to John. “Them?”

“Yes.” He said. Stiles raised an eyebrow.

“And there’s been no word from them since I was born?” he asked. John made that face that Stiles had perfected before he could talk, the one that said he was about to lie. “Dad!”

“The last time there was any contact was when your mother died. They came to the house the night of her funeral,” He said hastily, and Stiles’ mouth fell open.  
His mother’s funeral was something he never thought about if he could help it. He’d barely made it through that day, and thinking about it made it feel like all of the air left his lungs. But he remembered leaving afterwards, still in the suit John made him wear, angrily throwing himself onto his bike and pedaling away without looking back. He spent hours riding around until Scott eventually tracked him down and made him come home.

“Sheriff, is there any way to find out if they’re in Beacon Hills right now?” Lydia wondered. John looked from the picture to her, and then back again. Stiles got why his dad was being so hesitant about everything, he did, but this was important.

“I don’t understand it, they loved your mother. Why would they be after you?” He connected the dots on what Lydia was thinking. “Did you do something to piss off the witches in general? Because I wouldn’t put it past you.”

He was trying to make light of the situation, but the sudden knowledge that Stiles was once again in danger made the joke fall flat. Stiles stood up, wrapping his arms around his dad in a hug that goes on for minutes. Lydia stood by tensely and when Stiles looked over his dad’s shoulder at her, he knew that she was scared. Stiles was more worried about them being scared than being scared himself.

~

They met everyone at Derek’s loft, minus Kira because she was still out of town. They all listened carefully as Lydia explained the little bit of information they had. John was still trying to track down the witches, he knew names but hadn’t given them anything yet. Lydia could sense Stiles’ impatience while they discussed what they were going to do, the way he kept checking his phone and bouncing his leg for so long that Isaac threatened him with his claws if he didn’t try and calm down. The scent of anxiety was probably driving the werewolves insane.

“You said your mom’s note told you to protect your Spark?” Malia wondered from her spot on the couch beside Isaac.

“From what Deaton told me about Sparks, they can be passed down through a bloodline. We just thought it skipped a couple of generations. But apparently I’m a True Spark so…?” Stiles trailed off, glancing at Lydia.

“So what if it’s witches’ magic? It’s possible that your mother’s magic amplified your Spark when you tapped into it for the first time,” she suggested.

It wasn’t that much of a stretch to think that Claudia had given Stiles her magic. Lydia knew nothing about witches; it wasn’t that she didn’t think that they existed, they had to. There were werewolves, there had to be other things out there. But she’d never heard them mentioned until now.

The room suddenly got quiet, but not like everyone had stopped talking. This was a quick, startling silence like the room had been put on mute. She looked towards Scott, who was still talking to Derek. His mouth was moving but she couldn’t hear the words he was saying. She didn’t hear anything, not at first. But there was something there, and it was an odd twanging sound, almost like someone was plucking a string over and over and over.

There was a sharp tug in her chest every time Lydia heard the sound, and when she looked down, she saw a red string coming out of her chest. A gasp of surprise left her and it echoed through the room, but yet it was like no one heard her or saw her move to grab at it and pull. She couldn’t touch it, but she could feel it, and when she looked up, she saw that it trailed across the room to Stiles and disappeared into his chest. It was their anchor to one another.

After the sacrifices, they never really knew how deep the connection went. Scott went on to become a True Alpha and his own anchor, and Isaac lost his when Allison died. Lydia and Stiles were the only two still connected, but Lydia hadn’t thought about it. It was just something that was there. Being metaphysically tethered to Stiles for the rest of her life wasn’t exactly a hardship and while she couldn’t feel him all of the time, there were times she could feel his magic beneath his skin when she touched him.

“Lydia…” A voice called out to her, and it was definitely not Claudia’s. It echoed through her head, but she realized that it wasn’t an echo, it was more than one person saying her name.

They weren’t just saying her name, they were chanting it, and she slammed her hands over her ears as it got so loud it was almost like they were screaming it. 

“ _LYDIALYDIALYDIAAAAAA_ —”

“Lydia, can you hear me?” Someone was talking to her and she blinked open her eyes to find Derek and Stiles crouched down in front of her. Everyone was looking at her with concern.

“What happened?” she asked, and Stiles pulled her hands out of her lap, uncurling her fingers. Blood pooled into her palms; Lydia had dug her nails into her skin so hard she was bleeding.

  
  
[art by water_singer](http://watersinger.livejournal.com)   


“You were completely out of it.” Isaac said, as Malia went to get the first aid kit that Derek kept.

Lydia’s eyes flew to Scott’s face in panic. “Did I scream?”

“Hey, no, look at me Lydia,” Stiles wrapped a hand around the back of her neck, and she finally met his eyes. “We’re going to figure this out. I’m not going anywhere, okay? C’mon, have you known me to be wrong yet?”

Isaac coughed pointedly, and Lydia smiled slightly but it fell right off her face as tears started to run down her face. Stiles pulled her foreword and she pressed her face into his neck, taking comfort that he was right there in front of her, whole and alive.

“What did you hear, Lydia?” Scott asked.

Malia brought back the first aid kit, and Lydia let her gently clean her hands. She felt calm and couldn’t feel the pain at all that had come from hurting herself like this, and then she realized that Derek had his hand on her shoulder, pulling her pain out. She remembered the red string, and put her hand on her chest. But it wasn’t there.

“Someone was calling my name. More than one person, actually. And there was a red string, it connected Stiles and I, and I could hear someone pulling on the string and the voices were just so loud.” She explained.

“So, someone’s trying to sever your anchor, or they’re using it to get to Stiles?” Derek wondered. Lydia thought the same thing.

They needed to talk to Deaton. He’d been the one to help with the sacrifices, he would have to have some idea of what was going on. Stiles’ phone pinged, a message from his dad, and he let out a breath.

“According to him, all three of them are in Beacon Hills and we’ve been given a direct order not to approach them in any way on pain of death,” He said.

“If we don’t find them, your dad isn’t going to be the one killing you.” Malia said bluntly.

No one wanted to point out that she was right.

~

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay here? I can get Scott to go with me.” Stiles suggested as he and Lydia walked to the jeep.

Scott, Malia, Isaac and Derek were going to see if they could find where the witches were staying while Stiles and Lydia went to Deaton. It wasn’t ignoring the Sheriff exactly; they had no intentions of approaching the witches if they came across them.

Lydia fixed Stiles with a glare. “I’m not leaving your side, okay?”

Stiles felt bad for trying to get her to stay behind, but he didn’t want her to get hurt. He’d seen how she’d been in the loft, the look on her face. Lydia was determined to save him, and trying to talk her out of this just wasn’t an option.

“Noted.” He opened the passenger side door for her, and she turned to look at him before she got in. “Deaton says there might be something for me to do to protect my Spark, something we probably should have done sooner. But it should keep the witches away. It’s going to be okay, Lydia.”

She said nothing, instead wrapping her fingers into the front of his shirt and pulling him down to kiss him. He went to her willingly, wrapping his arms around her back and pulling her closer. It still took him by surprise, even months later, that they were together. That she loved him. He’d be damned if he’d let some witches ruin this for him.

Lydia pulled back, pushing him away with a tiny smile and climbing into the passenger seat. Stiles promised himself that he would make it out of this alive just to see her normal smile back on her face again. He closed the door and started to walk around the jeep, but stopped when he noticed something.

“Was it this foggy when we got here?” he called over his shoulder. Lydia said something, but he couldn’t hear what it was. And if anything, more fog rolled in, curling around his legs.

“Stiles?” Lydia opened the door. “What is it?”

Stiles turned around. “Stay in the jeep.”

He knew they were coming for him, he couldn’t hear things like Lydia could but he knew. Looking out across the parking lot, he saw the silhouette walking towards him. Lydia appeared at his side and Stiles eyed her in exasperation, he should have known that she wasn’t going to listen to him. The wind picked up, blowing through the trees around them, and Lydia shivered, tucking herself close to his side.

Stiles didn’t know what he was expecting, he’d never met a witch before so he didn’t exactly have an idea of what to expect. She looked like a normal woman, close to his father’s age with wavy brown hair and light eyes. When she got closer, Stiles saw that one of her eyes was brown.

“Genim Stilinski…or Stiles, is it?” She asked, her voice carrying across the space between them. “I’m Carin.”

Stiles pulled his phone out of his pocket to text Scott, but the screen wouldn’t come on. He had no doubt that she’d done something to his phone. “That’s great, really.”

“We should talk privately. Why don’t you send your little banshee inside?” Carin suggested. Her snide tone made him think of Kate Argent.

Lydia stood up a little straighter. “I think I’m good here.”

“Just the same,” Carin grinned and waved her hand at Lydia. Stiles watched Lydia open he mouth to say something, but nothing came out. It was like she was muted. “Can’t have you screaming for the wolves.”

“What did you do to her?” Stiles asked and the woman rolled her eyes at him.

“Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.” she stepped a little closer, and Stiles pulled Lydia back with him against the back of the jeep. “After all, she’s how we found you.”

“What?” he asked. Lydia opened her mouth again, struggling to speak, but it was no use.

“You’re tethered to a banshee, Stiles. It was like following the bread crumbs. A few well-placed voices and a few hallucinations, and she thought that Claudia was helping her to save you,” Carin said.

The witches had manipulated Lydia’s banshee powers to make her think that she was predicting Stiles’ death. They had used his dead mother against him. He didn’t even know how to take that. The fog around them thickened more, rising up until it nearly consumed them. Lydia grasped at Stiles’ arm, trying to hold onto him.

“Stop it!” Stiles yelled, and Carin laughed.

“Make me. C’mon, Stiles, use those special powers your mommy gave you. No? Oh, that’s right! You play with mountain ash, with wolfsbane. You’re no True Spark, Genim Stilinski. You don’t deserve this power.”

Lydia tried to pull Stiles away, back towards the entrance of Derek’s building, but he felt her slip free from his grasp before everything went black.

~

“STILES?” Lydia’s voice came back as the fog cleared and the wind died down, and she ran to the edge of the parking lot, screaming his name. “STILES!!”

But he was gone. There was no sign of him or Carin, and Lydia couldn’t even begin to guess which way they had gone. For all she knew, they had evaporated into thin air. She didn’t know if witches could do that kind of thing.

She heard the pounding of shoes on the blacktop and spun around to see Malia, Isaac, Scott and Derek running towards her. Lydia realized right then that they shouldn’t have tried to go to Deaton’s alone. They should have taken everyone, or at least someone else. But she didn’t know what good a werewolf could do against a witch.

“Where is he? Is he—” Scott’s voice held a familiar edge of panic that Lydia had heard too many times before, and her knees buckled. Only his werewolf reflexes kept her from collapsing onto the ground.

“She took him,” Lydia twisted around, trying to see into the shadows at the tree line, hoping that maybe she would find something out there, but there was nothing. “She took him Scott!”

She began to sob, the sound echoing loudly in the night. It felt like the last time Stiles went missing, except this time there was no evil spirit controlling him. He’d been right by her side and he’d literally been pulled right out of her fingers.

“There’s no scent. I can’t smell anything but Stiles and Lydia out here.” Isaac told Derek, but Lydia heard him anyways.

“We need to go to Deaton’s,” Malia insisted.

“We’re going to get him back, Lyds,” Scott assured her, as he helped her into the passenger seat of Derek’s car, and all she could do was nod numbly.

The whole drive to the clinic, all she could think about was the fact that the witches had found Stiles because of her connection to him. They’d used their tether, and her abilities as a banshee, against them. She barely knew what she was, and someone had taken that power and twisted it to hurt Stiles. To make her think that Stiles was going to die, that Claudia was trying to warn her to save him. She wasn’t going to let anyone do this to her, or her pack, again.

Deaton, it turned out, did know a way to help them find Stiles. The way he explained it to them, it was almost like the sacrifices, and the time that Isaac had been put under to find where they were keeping Boyd and Erica. Because of the anchor to Stiles, Lydia could be put under and she could follow that connection she had to Stiles to figure out where the witches had him.

“Like hypnosis?” Malia asked, since she was the only one who’d never seen it done.

“That’s right,” Deaton nodded. “Lydia’s not a wolf, but because she was Stiles’ anchor when we performed the sacrifices to save the Sheriff and the others, this should work just as well.”

Lydia glanced at the large metal tub that Isaac and Scott were filling up with ice. She still remembered what it was like to push Stiles beneath that freezing water, to watch him stop breathing and wait for him, Scott and Allison to come back. At this point, she would do anything to find Stiles and get him back to them safely.

“Couldn’t she just scream? I thought that focused her banshee powers.” Malia wondered. Lydia noticed Derek give his cousin a sort of soft indulgent smile, she was still learning a lot of the things she’d missed spending most of her life as a coyote.

“They planted all of the feeling she got in her head. None of it was real, or they covered up the real feelings she would have had,” Derek explained.

They dumped in the last bag, and Lydia stepped towards the tub, kicking off her heels at the edge. She watched Deaton drop in the leaves and herbs as the others gathered around. It had been nearly an hour since Stiles had been taken.

“You okay?” Scott asked from her left, and she looked over at him, offering him her bravest smile before nodding.

She took Scott and Derek’s hands, letting them help her into the tub. It took everything she had to stifle the startled gasp at how cold the water was, but she did let out a string of colorful words that even made Deaton crack a small smile as lowered herself down. Her teeth were already chattering by the time she was waist deep in the freezing water, the ice cubes brushing up against the bare skin of her arm.

“Better you than me this time,” Isaac said, and Lydia let out a surprised laugh while Scott and Derek both gave him a dirty look. “Right, sorry.”

“Are you ready, Lydia?” Deaton asked. She sucked in a few shaky breaths, releasing her death grip on the edge of the tub. She couldn’t hold it if they were going to push her under.

“I’m ready.” She said through clenched teeth.

It might have only taken one of them to hold her beneath the water, but in the end all of them pushed her under and Lydia fought the urge to open her mouth and scream or take a breath right away. Her blood thundered in her ears as she fought against their hold, the burning in her lungs unbearable. She had a werecoyote and three werewolves holding her down, she wasn’t coming back up. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly at the sides of the metal tub, and her thrashing sent water sloshing over the sides, but it was all just self-preservation. Some part of her knew that they had to hold her down until her heart stopped. Her eyes squeezed shut tight, Lydia felt like she was floating, slowly leaving her own body. She focused on thinking about Stiles instead of her own heartbeat getting weaker with each passing second. Tried to focus on the red string that she’d seen coming out of her chest and going into Stiles’. She let the darkness consume her, hoping with everything she had left that this worked.

~

“So which one of you is the good witch? Because this one right here,” Stiles gestured to Carin, who merely raised her eyebrows in a way that could have rivaled Derek. “Is obviously the bad witch.”

He’d been introduced to the other two members of his mother’s former coven, Odessa and Anna, and he had to admit, he had no idea how she’d ever associated herself with them. Seeing as how they currently had him bound to a chair in the middle of some creepy and cliché abandoned house, somewhere obviously not in Beacon Hills, they didn’t exactly hold any love for Claudia either.

“Oh, you are definitely Claudie’s son. She was always pretty heavy on the snark.” Odessa said, sitting in a chair across from him. She had nearly silver hair, wavy and thick and falling over one shoulder, and pale grey eyes. She was very obviously the leader, judging by the other two stood behind her.

Stiles swallowed around the lump in his throat at the mention of being like Claudia. “Funny, she never mentioned you.”

“She wasn’t supposed to. Her or your father. John wasn’t even supposed to know we existed. If he were actually of any importance to us, you wouldn’t be the only one sitting here, Stiles.” Anna said, her tone threatening. She was toying with a small red charm that was wrapped around the end of her braid, and Stiles realized with disgust that her fingers were stained with something that could have only been blood.

“If you think you’re the scariest thing my father has met, you should have seen my last English teacher.” He muttered, not wanting to take the fact that these women intended to kill him seriously.

“Are you done?” Carin asked impatiently and he gave her the finger the best he could with his hands tied.

“This deflection is cute, Stiles, but let’s get down to the point. You have something that isn’t yours. She had no right to pass her magic to you, it should have come back to her coven. In that respect, that makes your Spark ours as well, as it holds all of your mother’s power.” Odessa explained.

“He doesn’t do magic like we do, Dess, he’s the Emissary of the McCall pack.” Carin leaned down to whisper in Odessa’s ear, but Stiles heard her.

She wasn’t lying. Stiles didn’t tap into the magic he had, not since the Nogitsune got its hands on him. Deaton had started training him, explaining to him what a True Spark really was and how he could use that in the context of being the Emissary for the pack, like Deaton himself had been for the Hale pack. Being a True Spark, he actually gave power to the pack when they were weak, he would eventually be able to heal them magically. But it looked like he wasn’t going to get the chance to do any of that.  


“A True Alpha, a True Spark, a banshee…your pack is quite interesting, Stiles. Maybe we should have had Carin grab the little redhead as well.” Anna smiled at him, and Stiles just instantly decided she was giving Peter Hale a run for his money in the creep department.

He tugged on the restraints. “Touch her and I’ll kill you.”

The words slid out of his mouth so easily that he wasn’t even surprised by them. He’d threatened Isaac, back when Derek suspected that she could be the Kanima, but this was different. Because if they’d brought her here and hurt her in any way, he would have done anything he could to hurt them back.

Carin walked around Odessa’s chair and grabbed Stiles by the jaw, squeezing hard enough to bruise. He flinched and tried to pull back, but she held on until Odessa cleared her throat. “Give us your Spark, Stiles.”

“Oh I get it!” Stiles grinned suddenly, looking back and forth between the three of them. “You can’t take it from me, I have to give it to you? I saw a movie like this once, ya know? And let me tell you, you’d have a better chance torturing me than me giving up my Spark to you.”

He was pretty sure it was a lot safer to keep running his mouth while he waited for Scott and Lydia to figure out where he was. And now that he knew they couldn’t just take his Spark from him, that made him feel a little more positive about living. He had no doubt that his pack would find him before the witches did too much damage, at least he hoped, and he promised himself that if he made it out of this alive he was going to completely dedicate himself to his Emissary training because something like this wasn’t going to happen twice.

“Oh, Stiles.” Odessa got up from the chair and Carin stepped back to give her room. Any hope of making it out without injury faded as he saw a quick glint of silver and then felt a sharp pain below his ribs. Eyes almost comically wide, Stiles looked down to see the knife protruding from his side. She’d stabbed him. “I was so hoping that you’d be as rational as your mother had been as well.”

She twisted the knife, and Stiles screamed.

~

  
  
[art by water_singer](http://water_singer.livejournal.com)   


They were halfway to the house that Lydia had seen during the few minutes that she was technically dead, when a scream was torn from her throat so suddenly that it startled Derek and the car swerved in the middle of the road. He hit the brakes, causing Isaac and Malia to nearly collide with the front seats.

But it wasn’t like her normal banshee screams, she realized. This wasn’t the all over pain she felt when she felt like someone was going to die. This pain was in her ribs, near her heart. It felt like she had been stabbed. She didn’t know whether or not to feel grateful that it wasn’t anything more than that.

“Lydia?” Scott asked, and she took a deep breath, nodding and gesturing at the road.

“I’m okay. It’s something else. Keep going!” She urged, slumping back in the seat as Derek slammed his foot on the gas pedal.

They were hurting Stiles, and she could feel it all. Her fingernails dug furrows into the top of the center console as she tried to hold it together, but it was difficult knowing that he was being injured. Deaton had told him that the witches just couldn’t steal his Spark from him, he’d have to offer it. It was obvious they were going to try and find a way to make him do that.

“Hang on, we’re almost there. He’ll be okay.” Scott whispered by her ear, pressing his hand to her shoulder. She could feel the moment he started pulling the pain away, offering him a grateful smile over her shoulder.

They had a way to get the witches out of Beacon Hills and keep them away from Stiles, and that was what kept Lydia from screaming again when she felt the next phantom knife twist. And when she saw the house up ahead, two hours outside of Beacon County, most of the windows boarded up but light still showing in some of the broken windows, she felt nothing but relief.

Malia was still cradling the tiny jar in her hands that would protect them from the witch’s magic as they all got out of the car. Deaton wouldn’t tell them what it was made of, and Lydia honestly didn’t want to know. She watched her sit it on the railing of the porch, knowing now that it was there it would render their magic useless. They couldn’t touch it either. In fact, Deaton had put something in there that made it to where only Stiles could destroy it if he wanted to.

Isaac kicked in the door and they were met by one of the other two women that Lydia hadn’t seen before, one with a black braid and a cold smile on her face. She waved her hand at them, but nothing happened. She was rendered powerless.

“They’re blocking our magic!” She screeched, scrambling backwards as Derek growled and caught her by the throat. Her feet left the floor, legs kicking uselessly. He tossed her aside like she weighed nothing, and Lydia darted past him, shouting Stiles’ name.

They found him in what would have been the dining room, bleeding and tied to a chair. There was a woman with gray hair leaning over him, his blood dripping off of the knife that she held. He was still conscious, and Lydia could see a wound in his side that matched where she’d felt the pain before.

“Let him go.” Scott demanded, stepping forewords in front of Lydia. His eyes flashed red, and the woman swallowed visibly.

“He has to give me the magic. It’s not his,” She said feebly.

There was a noise behind them, and Malia spun around suddenly, grabbing Carin by the lapels of her coat as she rushed at them, blade in hand. Lydia almost winced in sympathy when she was slammed to the ground. In a different situation, she would have complimented Malia on her reflexes.

“It isn’t your magic to take. You’re trespassing in my territory. You’ve spilled the blood of a member of my pack. Do you know that I’m within my rights to kill you, all of you?” Scott asked.

The woman holding the knife stood up a little straighter. “I’ve heard you aren’t the killing type, Scott McCall. And last I’d heard, Beacon Hills was Hale territory.”

“Things changed. Scott is the Alpha now. And in case you don’t know, that’s his best friend and Emissary you have there. If you’re smart, you’ll let him go and leave while you still can,” Derek said.

“Odessa, we need the magic.” Carin protested, and Malia huffed in annoyance, slapping her hand over the woman’s mouth.

“Claudia Stilinski wasn’t in her rights to give her son her magic. By coven law, it should have been passed to us,” Odessa explained, but that really didn’t matter to any of them. All that mattered was that Stiles was bleeding out slowly right before their eyes.

“Was she a part of your coven when she died?” Isaac wondered.

Odessa floundered, and Lydia smiled faintly. They’d figured out the loophole. “No.”

“Then she wasn’t under coven law. Trying to justify yourself and drag this out isn’t going to help you. Maybe I should make an example out of you, just so people know that my pack isn’t to be harmed,” Scott said.

Lydia knew that he wouldn’t do it unless he absolutely had to. If she’d come at Stiles again with the knife in her hand, then maybe Scott would have attacked. But instead she let it clatter to the floor, stepping away from Stiles. Lydia ran over, catching Stiles face between her hands.

“Hey, hey you’re safe now, we’ve got you.” She whispered, leaning in and kissing him softly. He smiled against her lips.

“We’re gonna have matching scars now, Lyds.” He said wearily, and tears welled up in her eyes.

“I’m going to chalk that up to blood loss.” She said as Derek cut the ropes that held Stiles’ wrists to the arms of the chair with the same knife he’d been stabbed with.

“You’ll never step foot in Beacon Hills again. If you do, maybe it’ll be me who pays you another visit. Maybe a hunter with an excellent aim with a crossbow. You’ll never see us coming.” Scott warned Odessa. The woman nodded mutely, helping Carin up off of the floor.

“We won’t return.” She agreed, silencing the other woman’s protests with a stern look. Carin finally nodded grudgingly, and the two went to collect the other woman from the hall where Derek had left her.

Other than the stab wound, which was deep enough that he was going to need stitches, Stiles only had a few bruises and shallower cuts on his arms and face. Lydia watched as Derek and Isaac lifted him out of the chair, mindful of the wound in his side, and she realized something.

“I love you.” She said, strong and sure, and even in his condition Stiles managed to grin. Only he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at Scott.

“It looks like I didn’t need to extend that plan to fifteen years after all, Scotty.” He said, before promptly passing out.

~

Six months later;

Lydia was in the middle of trying to decide what dress she was going to wear to Stiles’ birthday party, when the lights above her head began to dim down. She tried not to roll her eyes in annoyance, but she couldn’t help it.

“Stiles, that is very distracting!” She called out, and the small candle on her vanity flickered to life.

“I did it!” She could hear his happy shout from downstairs, and she couldn’t even keep the fond smile off her face. He came bounding into the room, wide eyed as he gestured to the candle. “I totally lit that from outside of the room.”

Lydia spun around to look at him, lips pursed as she folded a dress over her arm. “That candle cost forty dollars.”

He looked mildly panicked for a moment, before he waved a hand and the flame went out. It had been six months of watching Stiles learn how to use the magic that Claudia had given him, and honestly, despite the few failed attempts and one extremely ruined set of drapes that her mother would never know about, Lydia was proud of how far he’d come. He’d already mastered the healing part, his own body being the first test subject for that. The knife wound that Odessa had given him was nothing more than a thin scar, something Lydia tended to trace her fingers over when she couldn’t sleep. To be fair, they did have matching scars. But he was well on his way to becoming a proper Emissary, and loved to tell Lydia so quite often.

“I got you an early birthday present.” Lydia announced, dropping the dress on her bed. Stiles grinned at her.

“Earlier wasn’t my early birthday present?” he asked mischievously, and Lydia actually blushed.

“Trust me, Stilinski, when you receive sex as a birthday present, you’ll know it.” She said, getting the small box from the closet and dropping it into his hands.

Curiously he lifted the lid off of the box, his eyes widening when he saw what was inside. Lydia had paid quite a bit of money for this, but honestly she wanted him to be able to have it, for himself and because of Claudia.

“It’s a translated copy of your mom’s book.” She explained as he was still staring at it. Hesitantly he lifted it out of the box, flipping through the pages. “I know it’s not really the same as the other one, because it’s not in your mom’s handwriting, but I thought you’d like to be able to read what she’d written.”

For a moment she thought that he wasn’t going to like it, but then he caught her around her waist and pulled her close, kissing her lightly.

“I love you.” He said, and she grinned up at him, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Don’t worry, I won’t pass out before I can say it back.” She teased, and he rolled his eyes. She pulled him down again, brushing her lips across his and smiling. “I love you too.”

Gently he sat the book down on her vanity. “Do you want to see me light the candle again?”

Lydia narrowed her eyes at him like she was trying to figure out of he was serious before she caved and said yes. It would be worth it, even if they would be late for the party.


End file.
